F1 2011 Developer Diary Co-op Mode

F1 2011 preview

After waiting so long for a good F1 game, it seems like the past year has flow by pretty quickly – mainly because I’ve spent most of it playing F1 2010. But as Codemasters’ BAFTA-winning bestseller approaches its first birthday, some fledgling official details have been revealed about its younger brother: the appropriately-titled F1 2011.

And unlike the Schumacher brothers, the younger one looks set to be a big improvement on its elder sibling.  Many changes are in the pipeline , with a new 16-player online mode (and a full 24-car grid, 8 cars being controlled by the computer), a split screen co-op mode, enhanced cinematics, better opponent AI and a completely rewritten pit lane system, necessary to avoid the bugs that infested part of the last game.

The most exciting element for me is the revealing of the two-player split screen mode. F1 2009 on the Wii has a fantastic two-player mode and I can’t wait to spend a couple of weekends with friends playing through a season trying to win the constructors championship. Developers have for too long ignored split screen fans and I think Codemasters are onto a real winner – I still have fond memories of the split screen mode from Toca 2 and that was released back in 1998. Thirteen years is a long enough wait.

A new handling model has been praised by those lucky few who have had the chance to play it, and the already-gorgeous graphics and weather effects have been tweaked so the game should be even more atmospheric. DRS and KERS will add another level of complication to the driving, and with the new Pirelli tyre degradation issues my expectations are already high.

Many things fans have been requesting on forums haven’t been addressed yet though – the rumoured safety car’s inclusion is still yet to be confirmed, alongside other more peripheral requests such as a helmet editor. It remains to be seen whether the game will include any political rows over the use of hot and cold blowing exhausts, double diffusers or the presence of team orders.

Just as last year, Codemasters are releasing a series of ‘Developer Diary’ videos, the first of which can be seen here.

The game is released on September 23^rd, and yes, I have pre-ordered it.

The importance of simulators in Formula 1

In case you wondered whether simulators really benefit Formula 1 drivers, then take note of new Scottish driver Paul Di Resta, who started driving for Force India this season, and in his first three races, finished in the points twice.

For the past few seasons he’s competed in the DTM championship in a works Mercedes saloon, and yet has produced three great performances in his first three F1 races, finishing just outside of the points at the last race in China. And if that isn’t enough, he hasn’t even been able to take full advantage of all the practice sessions available during a race weekend, as Force India have also been fielding their test driver Nico Hulkenberg during race weekends. So how is he making up for his lack of track time?

Speaking to the BBC’s Martin Brundle and David Coulthard on the grid on Sunday, Di Resta referred to the time he’s spent on the simulator, and went as far as saying they’d found settings on the simulator which had worked to put him into Q3 and 8th on the grid.

And considering the range of adjustments that are available on an F1 car, it’s probably the most impressive endorsement of simulators yet.

Codemasters recruiting for online Formula One game

Following the success of F1 2010, it looks like Codemasters Online see a big opportunity for an online game, as they’ve officially announced they are recruiting for a new development team to do just that.

Based at the Codemasters HQ in Warwickshire, the project is described as a ‘fully official and high quality Formula One browser gaming experience… highly accesible, thanks to an innovative design approach to car control, while offering persistence and depth of gameplay for a mainstream online gaming audience’.

And if you happen to be a programmer etc, you can find available roles at www.codemasters.com/jobs by selecting Online from the Department dropdown menu.

ORD reviews Codemaster’s F1 2010 – 4.5/5

Well, where do you begin? After all the hype and expectation, the first Formula One game for four years has arrived. Much was hoped for when Codemasters obtained the licence – a company with a good track record in making great racing games, and their style is immediately apparent when you boot up the game.

The presentation and menus are all beautifully presented – clean and modern, no lag when switching between menus and very easy to navigate. There aren’t a hundred logos and start-up screens to skip through every time you start the game and everything has been generally well laid-out. It’s also worth mentioning the soundtrack at this point too – the remix of Ian Brown’s F.E.A.R that formed the soundtrack to the developer diary videos is the perfect fit, with soothing strings re-recorded at the Abbey Road studios sounding effortlessly cool. In short, the presentation is top notch, crisp and good-looking.

But obviously looking and sounding cool is useless unless you have content to back it up, else you end up with the gaming equivalent of a T4 presenter – always has a great appearance but is ultimately incredibly boring. Fortunately this is not the case in F1 2010. Having said that, there are no real surprises in terms if game modes – you can start a career, do a time trial, have a one-off Grand Prix weekend or go online – nothing new there, but each option is fully customisable. If you want to do a full-length Grand Prix complete with free practice and qualifying sessions you can. If you want to do a whole season of one-lap races you can do that too. You can also create custom championships – pick your favourite tracks and do them in a sequence you choose. You can make the game your own which is far better than picking from a few rigid, uniform options.

The online modes are interesting too – firstly because there are only four to choose from and yet they adequately cover all bases. You can compete on a hot lap Q3-style shootout called ‘Pole Position’ as well as doing 3-lap, 10% and 20% – length races including mandatory pitstops. Damage levels are customisable, as is car performance – meaning you can choose all cars to be equal or for them to reflect their 2010 standings. Making them equal seems like the only fair thing to do online though – as it will be pretty frustrating to trundle round in an HRT for 20 laps and watching a Red Bull zoom past you just because you joined an online lobby late. But again, you can specify the criteria of games you want to join.

Online participation is rewarded in the form of experience points/XP – meaning you can rank up by setting fastest laps, finishing in the top three and even by completing clean and penalty-free racing laps. If you cause an accident or get disqualified all your XP will be void for that race – so it’s a nice incentive for racers to be a bit more careful online and will hopefully deter perennial rammers. In my first race I did Silverstone and ended up on my roof at Club – something made more frustrating by my not realising I had to press start and then ‘reset to track’ in order to carry on. I finished a lap down. Poo.

So let me stop myself beating about the bush any longer – it’s all about the quality of the racing. It’s probably why you are reading this and clearly the most important aspect of the game. And I’m xelighted to say Codies have nailed it. With all the namby-pamby options switched off like brake assist, traction control and ABS the cars are brilliantly brutal. There is a good learning curve when driving them and the feeling of speed is immense, and with all the circuits recreated in such detail it makes for a great experience. I can’t vouch for how the cars handle with all the driving aids turned on because I haven’t tried them out yet – but needless to say you can customise the game (and AI skill level) to make it as easy or hard as you want to and still have a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

As I just mentioned, the circuits look great. They are all 2010-spec, meaning Singapore’s Marina Bay night race is included complete with minor tweaks to the chicanes and the Korean Grand Prix features for the first time in any racing game. Added to painstakingly recreated classics like Monaco, Monza and Spa-Francorchamps there is more than enough to keep hardened F1 fans happy for a long time. Little hills and spectator banking on the outside in the track are in the right place, even food outlets can be seen where they should be – and overall the graphical design is a superb achievement… and all this is before you factor in the weather.

F1 2010′s dynamic weather system is very impressive – to the point where it can genuinely ‘rain’ on different parts of the circuit at any one time. For instance it can be wet at Spa through La Source and Eau Rouge, but when you get around to Poulin the track is dry – which is where the game allows you to employ Jenson Button-esque tyre call tactics. Do you stay out on slicks and hope it dries up? Or pit early for wets and potentially make up a lot of time? These are calls that will make and break real championships, and their inclusion adds a whole new dimension to the game. The rain itself looks stunning – making it both exhilarating and terrifying to closely follow in another car’s spray.

Pit stops themselves are also quite interesting – you can set these to ‘automatic’ and ‘manual’ and as always in racing games the ‘manual’ option is a lot more fun and rewarding. This requires you to brake down to the put lane speed limit as you enter, and hold down the rev limiter. Then you have to slow down for your pit box – as overshooting will cost you valuable time and you’ll have to sit patiently as your mechanics push you back into position. Then it’s back on the rev limiter and away. If you’re also using manual gears the pit stop is quite a technical exercise, but one that is very enjoyable once you know what you are doing. I imagine anyway, as I keep overshooting my put box. Poo.

The only criticisms I can level at the game are relatively minor, but they do prevent F1 2010 getting a perfect score. My two biggest gripes are the lack of a two-player split screen, and the limitation of online races to twelve cars per-race. Codies did a sterling job last year with F1 2009 on the Wii, and managed to squeeze in a full two-player split-screen championship mode. Given the increased power available to the PS3, Xbox 360 and PC in particular I’m disappointed at the exclusion of the feature. I wouldn’t mind it so much had the online modes catered for full F1 grid of 24 players racing simultaneously. Having done a few races online and seeing the general carnage for myself I can see why they have chosen to limit the numbers, but a twelve-car grid for an F1 race still seems somewhat disappointing. If the designers were worried about newbies and rammers spoiling everyone else’s fun they could have implemented an XP system where you unlock the ability to participate in full races. There may be other technical reasons for it too, but it still seems something of a missed opportunity.

However neither of these ‘problems’ are things that detract massively from the overall experience of playing the game, and are very minor criticisms given the brilliant overall experience the game offers. F1 2010 has had me going ‘ooh’, ‘wow’ and ‘whaaaat!’ for a couple of days and has genuinely set a new benchmark for the genre. It is a game that will keep fans of the sport more than happy for a long time to come and I can categorically say that it was definitely worth the wait.

Looking to buy F1 2010? We recommend:

Amazon: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3.
(Currently with the lowest prices – £34.99 for new copies for Xbox/PS3)

Game: PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3.

Gamestop: Xbox 360, Playstation 3.

Play.com: PC, XBox 360, Playstation 3

The PC version is £29.99 from Game, Play.com and Amazon.

F1 2010 – Codemasters Developer Diary 5

Codemasters F1 2010 – Extended Developer Diary No4 video

F1 2010 – Developer Diary Video No.4 (Tracks and Cars)

Motorsport Manager Wanted

I always enjoyed a bash on Grand Prix Manager, but somehow always managed to fail miserably with whatever team I picked. I’m not sure if it was my poor understanding of business, strategy, persistent hiring of Damon Hill or anything else I was doing wrong but Damon and his teammate would always qualify on the front row and then fail miserably in the race. Every bloody race. The new Frank Williams I was obviously not.

World’s Best Boss by Kumar Appaiah on Flickr (CC Licence)

But I’ve grown up a bit now and whilst my understandings of business, strategy and Damon Hill have all improved, there is nothing available for me to test out my adult skills. In fact there has been lack of motorsport management games for a while now. The first one was the ZX Spectrum’s Grand Prix Manager in 1984, which wasn’t much bettered for a decade when MicroProse released Grand Prix Manager in 1995 and a sequel one year later. Since the third in the series – 1998’s Grand Prix World – there have been slim pickings for the discerning wannabe virtual motorsport manager.

There is little doubt developers don’t fancy it at the moment – there has been no established market for over a decade and most big developers are understandably a little risk-averse in these challenging economic times – but with Football Manager topping the PC charts every year without fail I’d be willing to bet a good motorsport management simulation could make some money for a publisher willing to take the plunge. If a developer were willing to go further than a classic simulator, why not make it a massively-multiplayer online simulator similar to Football Manager Live? Online Race Driver’s own GTDon just wrote an article about the imminent return of racing communities, so why not sync the game up with an R-Factor, or Forza, or GT5 or even F1 2010? Before long we could have fully fledged virtual racing teams completing with managers and drivers… then it would be a matter of time until virtual tyre manufacturer is released. And that would have to be called ‘Burning Rubber’. Or how about ‘FIA Manager’, where you take charge of international motorsport and have to sort out political in-fighting and get all the F1 teams bosses to sign the Concorde Agreement whilst keeping costs down and avoiding dungeon-based S&M scandals.

It’s been too long since there was a good motorsport management sim, and I’m not sure there has even ever been one on a console, but just because Chipping Sodbury’s finest are no longer in operation it shouldn’t prevent anyone else from having a go. After all, there is now a new generation of gamers that have never had the pleasure, like me, of being absolutely terrible at a motorsport management simulator.

(Editors note: If you’re tempted by the though of reliving Grand Prix Manager 2, there are copies available through places like Amazon – and you can always justify it as a retro gaming investment: Buy Grand Prix Manager 2 )

Real World Racing Round-Up: Formula One Frenzy

The Formula One season got underway earlier today with a dramatic victory for Fernando Alonso on his Ferrari debut. He headed team-mate Felipe Massa by a comfortable 16 seconds at the chequered flag, with Lewis Hamilton third for McLaren.

Sebastien Vettel crawled home in fourth after mechanical trouble struck when leading – the German Red Bull driver had led from the start and was around 2/3s of the way to the flag when his car suddenly slowed. But he was able to at least salvage some points in front of the rapidly closing Mercedes of Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher, the McLaren of Jensen Button, and Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber, who had overcome his own mechanical drama at the second corner when he appeared to lose some oil in a cloud of smoke. Liuzzi and Barrichello rounded out the top ten.

Fernando Alonso on Flickr by Kike@ (used under CC Licence)

Some have already suggested this could be the start of an unstoppable season from Alonso, but that seems a bit presumptive – not only were the likes of Hamilton on a charge from the middle of the race, but Vettel was looking likely to win until his mechanical failure. And Schumacher made an inspiring return for a 41-year-old in a new car – and he didn’t get much time to test before the season began. As one of the few current motorsport champions to dominate so conclusively (Along with Valentino Rossi and Sebastien Loeb), he wouldn’t have returned if he thought it would tarnish his seven previous championship titles.

In other racing, Giacomo Ricci won the GP2 race in Bahrain, from Sam Bird and Alvaro Parente.

And in Sao Paulo, Will Power took the Indy 300 win for Penske, with Ryan Hunter-Reay in second, and Vitor Meira in third. Reigning champion Dario Franchitti was seventh, and Ana Beatriz took 13th as one of two female drivers in the series (Danica Patrick was 15th).

One interesting fact is that Lotus managed to return to both Formula One and Indycar on the same day. As the Lotus team were racing in Bahrain (Heikki Kovalainen finished 15th), IndyCar team KV Racing were fielding a Lotus Cosworth in Brazil with former F1 star Takuma Sato. Unfortunately after qualifying in 10th, the Japanese driver fell victim to a first lap incident.

In the two wheel world, Honda has launched the 2010 Honda RC212V at the pentultimate round of the Indoor Trial World Championship in Spain, which will be ridden by Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso. Meanwhile, Suzuki has also revealed images of the 2010 GSV-R to be used by Loris Capirossi and Alvaro Bautista. The season begins on April 11th.